LETTERS: Management training could only be good for Labour

ALAN Watkins is ill-informed. Management is perhaps the social science that stands most clearly at the interface of theory and practice and any management training of value will recommend reading and reflection, although games can form a useful part of the curriculum. The kind of reading Mr Watkins recommends could, of course, provide useful texts for management study.

I would add Nigel Lawson's account of the Thatcher cabinet as an example of how not to manage a top team and as a failure of leadership. But one should be careful of privileging reading as the primary learning activity. To emphasise the written word at the expense of speech is very short- sighted. Surely what we all need, politicians perhaps most of all, is to improve the quality of dialogue. One would hope a good management training course would provide such an opportunity. I wish the Shadow Cabinet well at Templeton.

Professor Ken Starkey

The University of Nottingham